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Armonk, NY — Dec 18, `07 — IBM today announced the availability of IBM Atlas for Lotus Connections, a corporate social networking visualization and analysis tool.

IBM Atlas for Lotus Connections is designed to help organizations maximize their investment in social software by answering questions such as who the key experts are on a given topic, how they are connected, and whom a user’s contacts know that they do not.

Developed by IBM Research, Atlas has four Web 2.0-based components — My Net, Find, Reach and Net. These components help users spot the important connections and the relationships between various groups and navigate their personal and corporate networks.

The Net component of Atlas provides a visual indication of the important hubs among topic experts and informal groups that have developed while working on similar projects.

My Net offers similar capabilities for a user’s personal network. For example, a salesperson can better manage and understand their social networks making sure they have connections across the right topic areas.

Reach, the social software dashboard feature in Atlas, helps users navigate the up to six degrees of separation that divide them from a colleague. The dashboard shows users the shortest path to reach an expert and ranks the expert based on the level of interaction across the network.

The Find component of Atlas builds upon core Lotus Connections expertise capabilities by taking searches beyond the corporate directory to include results based on social data such as reporting structures, blogs and communities.

Atlas is designed to work with IBM Lotus Connections, the industry’s first integrated enterprise social software platform. The latest version of Lotus Connections, version 1.02, is now available and features:

* Expanded support for operating systems such as SUSE Linux, browsers such as Mozilla Firefox 2.0 and directories such as Microsoft Active Directory, enabling businesses to deploy and integrate social software across their IT environment.
* Plug-ins for IBM Lotus Notes, IBM Lotus Sametime, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Explorer and IBM WebSphere Portal, enabling people to interact with their professional networks using their everyday productivity tools.
* A rich API based on the REST and Atom standards allow other applications to utilize the profiles, community, bookmarking, blogging and activity services of Lotus Connections.

More on IBM Atlas at IBM.

East Fishkill, NY and TOKYO, Japan –December 18, `07 — IBM and Toshiba today announced that they have entered into a joint development agreement on 32nm bulk complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) process technology.

Since December 2005, IBM and Toshiba have collaborated on fundamental advanced research related to semiconductor process technologies at the 32nm technology generation and beyond at the research facilities in Yorktown and Albany, New York. Building on the success of this ongoing research collaboration, the two companies have agreed to extend the scope of the joint development work to now include 32nm bulk CMOS process technology.

Under the new agreement, Toshiba joins a six company IBM Alliance for 32nm bulk CMOS process technology development based in East Fishkill, New York.

Through this collaboration IBM and Toshiba plan to accelerate development of next-generation technology to achieve high-performance, energy-efficient chips at the 32nm process level, and to enhance the companies’ leadership in the global semiconductor industry.

“This agreement caps a year of extraordinary momentum for IBM and its semiconductor Alliance Partners,” said Gary Patton, vice president for IBM’s Semiconductor Research and Development Center. “In 2008 we’ll continue to strive to collectively deliver the industry breakthroughs and manufacturing milestones that come from talented engineers and semiconductor experts working in an open, collaborative environment with access to world class R&D facilities such as UAlbany NanoCollege’s Albany NanoTech complex.” More at Toshiba.

BRUSSELS, Belgium — Dec 18, `07 — Software maker Platform Solutions has filed a complaint with the European Commission alleging that IBM abused its market dominance by refusing to share information related to its high- performance mainframe computers.

The complaint, filed on Oct 19, according to a European Commission spokesman Jonathan Todd, is the latest in an ongoing intellectual property dispute between privately held Platform Solutions and IBM Corp.

Platform Solutions alleges that IBM abused EU antitrust rules “by refusing to supply interface information relating to mainframe computers and refusing to license third parties,” Todd said.

IBM and Platform Solutions have sued each other in the US over related intellectual-property and antitrust issues. The EU filing follows a European court ruling in September upholding a decision against Microsoft that it abused its dominant position by failing to help competitors connect to the Windows operating system.

In December 2006, IBM sued Platform Solutions charging that the company, which manufactures software that can run on IBM’s high-end systems, violated patents IBM holds on some of its operating systems.

In January Platform Solutions filed its own US suit accusing IBM of refusing to supply its operating systems to customers who buy Platform Solutions’s IBM- compatible mainframe computer. Platform Solutions also accused IBM of “unreasonably discontinuing” its licensing of intellectual-property rights.

BURLINGTON, MA, Dec 17, `07 – Cognos today announced that it has extended its wireless business intelligence solution, Cognos 8 Go! Mobile, to support Windows Mobile 6 smartphones.

Cognos 8 Go! Mobile is the industry’s first business intelligence solution designed to make it convenient to view, consume and interact with highly relevant performance information on mobile devices.

Cognos 8 Go! Mobile delivers enterprise data through an intuitive interface optimized for each different type of mobile platform. It now brings timely decision-support information directly to Windows Mobile 6 devices. All decision makers who need to access BI content across the enterprise, either through a mobile device or on the Web, are able to use the same consistent, trusted source of operational information. More at Cognos.

YORKTOWN HEIGHTS, NY - Dec 06, 2007 — Supercomputers that consist of thousands of individual processor “brains” connected by miles of copper wires could one day fit into a laptop PC, thanks in part to a breakthrough by IBM scientists announced today.

And while today’s supercomputers can use the equivalent energy required to power hundreds of homes, these future tiny supercomputers-on-a-chip would expend the energy of a light bulb.

In a paper published in the journal Optics Express, the IBM researchers detailed a significant milestone in the quest to send information between multiple cores — or “brains” — on a chip using pulses of light through silicon, instead of electrical signals on wires.

The breakthrough — known in the industry as a silicon Mach-Zehnder electro-optic modulator — performs the function of converting electrical signals into pulses of light. The IBM modulator is 100 to 1,000 times smaller in size compared to previously demonstrated modulators of its kind, paving the way for many such devices and eventually complete optical routing networks to be integrated onto a single chip. This could significantly reduce cost, energy and heat while increasing communications bandwidth between the cores more than a hundred times over wired chips.

Today, one of the most advanced chips in the world — IBM’s Cell processor which powers the Sony Playstation 3 — contains nine cores on a single chip. The new technology aims to enable a power-efficient method to connect hundreds or thousands of cores together on a tiny chip by eliminating the wires required to connect them. Using light instead of wires to send information between the cores can be 100 times faster and use 10 times less power than wires.

IBM’s optical modulator performs the function of converting a digital electrical signal carried on a wire, into a series of light pulses, carried on a silicon nanophotonic waveguide. First, an input laser beam is delivered to the optical modulator, which acts as a very fast “shutter” which controls whether the input laser is blocked or transmitted to the output waveguide.

When a digital electrical pulse arrives from a computer core to the modulator, a short pulse of light is allowed to pass through at the optical output. In this way, the device “modulates” the intensity of the input laser beam, and the modulator converts a stream of digital bits (“1”s and “0”s) from electrical signals into light pulses.

The report on this work, entitled “Ultra-compact, low RF power, 10 Gb/s silicon Mach-Zehnder modulator” by William M. J. Green, Michael J. Rooks, Lidija Sekaric, and Yurii A. Vlasov of IBM’s T.J.WatsonResearch Center in Yorktown Heights, N.Y. is published in Volume 15 of the journal Optics Express. This work was partially supported by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) through the Defense Sciences Office program “Slowing, Storing and Processing Light”.More at IBM.

ARMONK, NY — Dec 06 ‘07 — IBM today announced it has filed a complaint against ASUSTeK (based in Taiwan) and its North American subsidiary, ASUS Computer International, with the United States International Trade Commission. The complaint details the infringement of IBM patents by certain ASUSTeK computer products and components, and requests an exclusion order against the importation of infringing ASUSTeK computer products and components into the United States.

IBM has made repeated attempts to reach a licensing agreement between the companies. IBM’s position has been — and remains — that ASUSTeK either must license or stop using IBM’s patented technology.

IBM’s complaint identifies three patents that are infringed by ASUSTeK products imported into the U.S. These three patents cover important aspects of computer systems, including power supplies, computer cooling and computer clustering capabilities. The infringing ASUSTeK computer products include notebook computers, so-called barebones computer systems, servers, routers and various computer components.

The specific patents asserted in the IBM complaint are:

1. U.S. Patent No. 5,008,829: Personal computer power supply
2. U.S. Patent No. 5,249,741: Automatic fan speed control
3. U.S. Patent No. 5,371,852: Method and apparatus for making a cluster of computers appear as a single host on a network

The United States International Trade Commission is an independent federal agency with authority to bar the importation of products that infringe US patents. More at IBM.

WASHINGTON — Dec 04, ‘07 — US antitrust authorities said on Tuesday they have approved IBM’s purchase of software maker Cognos for $5 billion, Reuters reported.

IBM’s proposal to buy Canada-based Cognos, the last major independent maker of business intelligence software, was on a list of approved deals that the Federal Trade Commission releases periodically.

Cognos makes software that combs through vast amounts of data to analyze business trends. For example, Harrah’s Entertainment uses a Cognos program to keep frequent gamblers coming back to its casinos.

Software is IBM’s fastest-growing and most profitable division. IBM also uses software products to get customers to buy its consulting services and hardware. More at Reuters.

TAMPA, Fla — Dec 03, ‘07 /PRNewswire/ — T3 Technologies announced today that it has filed an anti-trust claim against IBM in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York alleging anti-trust violations and unfair competition. The filing seeks to join Platform Solutions’ existing anti-trust litigation against IBM due to the similarities in the company’s allegations.

T3’s claims are based on a history of efforts by IBM to maintain and extend its monopoly power in the mainframe hardware industry. T3 alleges that since the expiration of the U.S. Justice Department’s Consent Decree in 2001, and contrary to historical practices that resulted from that decree, IBM has prevented the sales of competing mainframe hardware products by withholding the licensing of IBM’s mainframe operating systems to any hardware systems except their own. T3 is seeking undisclosed damages.

“Imagine if Microsoft decided to manufacture PC’s and then refused to sell Windows for any computers except their own. The world would be without Dell, HP, and all other PC and server vendors– even IBM!” said Steven Friedman, President of T3 Technologies. “That’s exactly what IBM is doing in the mainframe world.”

T3 championed the cause of smaller mainframe users when they began marketing their tServer line of mainframe-compatible systems in 2000. Developed specifically for small-mid sized users that IBM offerings no longer suited, the tServer became the leading small mainframe in the world, with over 600 units installed in 28 countries.

In 2006, T3 released their Liberty family of mainframes, which accommodates larger users than the tServer does and added extended functionality. The Liberty technology is based on firmware developed by and licensed from Platform Solutions, Inc. Contrary to the tServer, Liberty systems compete directly with much of IBM’s z9 BC product line.

Within weeks of shipping the first few Liberty systems, IBM notified T3 Liberty customers that they would not license any IBM mainframe operating systems for Liberty hardware. At the same time, IBM also refused to license new operating systems for the tServer line as well.

“The tServer was a great success because it perfectly matched the function and value needs of smaller mainframe users, something IBM still isn’t providing. Liberty was similarly designed to meet the specific needs of the market space above tServer, up to 350 MIPS.

The initial success of Liberty showed we were on target again until IBM pulled the rug out from us.” Friedman said. “It’s not only T3 that’s been damaged by IBM’s actions. As in any monopoly situation, all end-users suffer when there’s a lack of choice. Simply stated, the result of IBM’s actions has been the elimination of every alternative in the marketplace.”

More at T3T.

ARMONK, NY - 12 Nov 2007 – IBM’s Blue Gene/L supercomputer sprinted to a new world record as it continued its four-year domination of the official TOP500 Supercomputer Sites list. The world’s fastest computer at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California is now nearly three times faster than the rest of the pack. 

Livermore’s Blue Gene/L was expanded this summer to deliver a sustained performance of 478 trillion calculations per second (478 “teraflops”).

The No. 2 computer in the world – and Europe’s fastest – is the new first-time installation of Blue Gene/P, a sister machine to Blue Gene/L, located at the research consortium Jülich in Germany. Jülich’s Blue Gene/P clocks in at 167 teraflops.

IBM systems dominate the TOP500 rankings with a total of 232 on the list, the most of any vendor. The vast majority of IBM’s speediest systems – 183 — are cluster configurations built with commodity microprocessors – another TOP500 record.

Breaking the Petaflop Barrier
Leading the industry, IBM is closing in on a computing milestone known as a “petaflop” – the ability to process 1,000 trillion calculations every second.  Petaflop computers promise exponential breakthroughs in science and engineering by providing predictive and highly detailed simulations. Earthquake simulations, for example, could show building-by-building movements of entire regions along the San Andreas fault, improving future designs of earthquake-resistant structures. 

Move Over for ‘Roadrunner’ in 2008
Rounding out IBM’s petaflop portfolio will be a computer nicknamed “Roadrunner,” a hybrid design that blends thousands of PC-type processors from AMD, and the Cell Broadband Engine, the graphics processor at the heart of the Sony Playstation 3. Roadrunner, planned to be delivered to the U.S. Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory in summer 2008, will be capable of speeds exceeding a petaflop. By combining the two styles of microprocessors, Roadrunner will slash typical power consumption to offer a highly energy-efficient operating environment. More at IBM.

ARMONK, N.Y. & OTTAWA, Ontario — 12 Nov 2007 – IBM and Cognos today announced that the two companies have entered into a definitive agreement for IBM to acquire Cognos, a publicly-held company based in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, in an all-cash transaction at a price of approximately $5 billion USD or $58 USD per share, with a net transaction value of $4.9 billion USD. The acquisition is subject to Cognos shareholder approval, regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions. It is expected to close in the first quarter of 2008.

Cognos provides the only complete BI and performance management platform, fully integrated on an open-standards-based service oriented architecture (SOA), and has a strong history of supporting heterogeneous application environments, consistent with IBM’s approach.

Following completion of the acquisition, IBM intends to integrate Cognos as a group within IBM’s Information Management Software division, focused on Business Intelligence and Performance Management.

Cognos has approximately 4,000 employees worldwide and serves more than 25,000 customers. IBM and Cognos have partnered for more than 15 years, with extensive technical integrations and eight pre-integrated joint solutions already supporting many joint customers, such as New York City Police Department, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Tennessee, Canadian Tire, MetLife, and Bayer UK. More at IBM.

ARMONK, NY - Nov 08, ‘07 – IBM Global Business Services unveiled its new report, “The End of Advertising as We Know It,” forecasting greater disruption for the advertising industry in the next five years than occurred in the previous 50.

To examine the factors influencing advertising and explore future scenarios, IBM surveyed more than 2,400 consumers and 80 advertising executives globally.

Traditional advertising players risk major revenue declines as budgets shift rapidly to new, interactive formats, which are expected to grow at nearly five times that of traditional advertising. To survive in this new reality, broadcasters must change their mass audience mind-set to cater to niche consumer segments, and distributors need to deliver targeted, interactive advertising for a range of multimedia devices.

Advertising agencies must experiment creatively, become brokers of consumer insights, and guide allocation of advertising dollars amid exploding choices. All players must adapt to a world where advertising inventory is increasingly bought and sold in open exchanges vs. traditional channels.

“Digital entertainment is experiencing faster adoption than anyone had previously anticipated. The advertising community needs to dramatically re-orient its business to serve consumers who increasingly access content in non-linear formats,” said Bill Battino, Communications Sector managing partner, IBM Global Business Services. “Companies must re-look at how they serve content to consumers with business models based much more on engaging consumers in a relationship.”

The report observes four change drivers tipping the advertising industry balance of power: control of attention, creativity, measurement, and advertising inventories. As shown in IBM’s global digital media and entertainment consumer survey released in August, consumers’ attention has shifted, with personal Internet time rivaling TV time.

Consumers have tired of interruption advertising, and are increasingly in control of how they interact, filter, distribute, and consume their content, and associated advertising messages. IBM’s survey findings demonstrated that half of DVR owners watch 50 percent or more of programming on re-play, and that traditional video advertising doesn’t translate online: 40 percent of respondents found ads during an online video segment more annoying than any other format.

Amateurs and semi-professionals are increasingly creating low cost advertising content that threatens to bypass creative agencies, while publishers and broadcasters are broadening their own creative roles.

The report indicates by 2012, the landscape of the industry will change so profoundly that to survive, advertising industry players need to take aggressive steps to innovate in three key areas:

• Consumers: making micro-segmentation and personalization paramount in marketing;
• Business models: how and where advertising inventory is sold, the structure and forms of partnerships, revenue models and advertising formats;
• Business design and infrastructure: All players need to redesign organizational and operating capabilities across the advertising lifecycle to support consumer and business model innovation: consumer analytics, channel planning, buying/selling, creation, delivery and impact reporting.

More at IBM.

YORKTOWN HEIGHTS, NY - 21 Oct 2007: IBM and MediaTek Inc. today launch a joint initiative to develop ultra fast chipsets that can wirelessly transmit a full-length high definition movie to and from a home PC, hand-held device, retail kiosk or television set nearly as fast as a viewer can push their remote control.

The new technology will allow consumers to rid their homes of the cumbersome wires needed to connect their HD-TVs to set top boxes and allow the placement of devices anywhere that is convenient, instead of having to organize furniture and other accessories around technology.

Both companies will combine their expertise in millimeter wave (mmWave) radio technology — the highest frequency portion of the radio spectrum where massive amounts of information can be sent quickly — and digital chipsets to create revolutionary multimedia wireless products. The large bandwidth for data transmission available at the mmWave frequency band enables at least 100 times higher data rates than current Wi-Fi standards.

For example, you could upload a 10 gigabyte file in five seconds with the new technology versus 10 minutes using current Wi-Fi technology. mmWave wireless technology can be widely used at home and office for applications such as multimedia content downloads or uncompressed HDTV streaming from your DVD player. You could wirelessly download and synchronize iPod-like devices with music and videos in seconds.

More at IBM

Slashdot have this mind-boggling article about IBM wants to patent ‘Patent-Protection-Racket’. In their words, “Wikipedia defines a protection racket as an extortion scheme whereby a powerful non-governmental organization coerces businesses to pay protection money which allegedly serves to purchase the organization’s ‘protection’ services against various external threats. Compare this to IBM’s just-published patent application for ‘Extracting Value from a Portfolio of Assets’, which describes a process by which ‘very large corporations’ impress upon smaller businesses that paying for ‘the protection of a large defensive patent portfolio’ would be ‘a prudent business decision’ for them to make, ‘just like purchasing a fire insurance policy.’ Sounds like Fat Tony’s been to Law School, eh? Time for IBM to put-their-money-where-their-patent-reform-mouth-is and deep-six this business method patent claim!”

This makes me wonder is this the same IBM which brought the computers in to the world in first place OR this is the IBM which has lost all its technological / intellectual / innovative edge and now just trying to survive thru ‘Patent-Protection-Rackets’…

In line with earlier reports of Sony to Sell Chip Operations to Toshiba, Sony officially announces chip Production line transfer to Toshiba. Toshiba, Sony, and SCEI Sign a Memorandum of Understanding Establishing a Joint Venture to Strengthen Manufacturing Capabilities for High-Performance Semiconductors.

Tokyo, Japan October 18, 2007—Toshiba Corporation, together with Sony Corporation and Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. (Sony Group) today announced that they have signed a non-binding memorandum of understanding expressing their intent to establish a joint venture that will produce high-performance semiconductors, including the ‘Cell Broadband Engine™’ (Cell/B.E.) and the ‘RSX’ graphics engine, and to transfer to Toshiba from the Sony Group the 300mm wafer line fabrication facilities installed in Fab 2 of Sony Semiconductor Kyushu Corporation’s Nagasaki Technology Center by the end of March 2008. Following the transfer, production on the line will be operated by the
joint venture. Subject to receipt of any necessary government approval and after further due diligence, Toshiba and the Sony Group will aim to finalize the definitive agreements as soon as possible before the end of March 2008.

Expands Alliances with IBM and Toshiba:

TOKYO, JAPAN - Oct 18, 2007: Sony Corporation and Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. (Sony Group) today announced two new and separate partnership agreements with the goal of enhancing the capabilities of Sony Group’s PlayStation business.

1. IBM and Sony have signed an agreement to extend their existing manufacturing relationship to 45-nanometer silicon-on-insulator (SOI) for high volume production of the Cell Broadband Engine™ (Cell/B.E.) processor. Both companies will collaborate to optimize the 45-nanometer manufacturing capability to produce a lower power and lower cost processor for Sony Group’s PLAYSTATION®3. IBM will lead the evolution of the Cell/B.E. component by transitioning production from the existing 65-nanometer generation to 45-nanometer in IBM’s manufacturing facility in East Fishkill, New York.

2. Separately, Sony Group will extend their alliance with Toshiba to manufacture high-performance LSI by using 45-nanometer bulk process technology. By forming a joint venture company that leverages the knowledge and experience of both companies, Sony
Group and Toshiba intend to improve power consumption and cost competitiveness for game and digital media applications by advancing to the 45-nanometer generation from the existing 65-nanometer generation process.

More at Sony here and here

ARMONK, NY - 16 Oct 2007: IBM today announced third-quarter 2007 diluted earnings of $1.68 per share from continuing operations compared with diluted earnings of $1.45 per share in the third quarter of 2006, an increase of 16 percent as reported. Third- quarter income from continuing operations was $2.4 billion compared with $2.2 billion in the third quarter of 2006, an increase of 6 percent. Total revenues for the third quarter of 2007 of $24.1 billion increased 7 percent (3 percent, adjusting for currency) from the third quarter of 2006.

Chief Financial Officer Mark Loughridge told analysts the company experienced a slowdown with financial services customers in September, but that analysts’ fourth-quarter target of 15 percent earnings per share growth was ‘reasonable.’ IBM shares fell 1.2 percent after the company reported Tuesday that its third-quarter profit was $2.36 billion, or $1.68 per share. That surpassed the profit of $2.22 billion and $1.45 per share that IBM posted in the same quarter of 2006.

As in several previous quarters, IBM leveraged stock repurchases to achieve hefty gains in earnings per share even with revenue growth in single-digit percentages. In a conference call with analysts, Chief Financial Officer Mark Loughridge noted that earnings per share have risen 16 percent this year, which puts the company ahead of its previous guidance of a 14 percent to 15 percent rise in 2007.

The brightest spot this time was IBM’s services division, where IBM has worked hard to lower expenses in what has traditionally been a labor-intensive field.

More at IBM Press Room